eWEEK’s Top 25 Technologies Of The Decade
From virtualisation to Linux to the Apple iPhone, eWEEK names the products, applications and technologies of the last decade that have changed the way we work, play and live
15. Openoffice.org
Sure, if the bar for success is supplanting Microsoft Office, then Openoffice.org has been a failure. But if overall impact is considered, Openoffice.org has definitely been influential, especially when it comes to opening up document formats.
16. POE
Power over Ethernet is still a relatively new technology, and many companies haven’t implemented it yet. But companies that have moved to POE have seen major benefits, especially in the ability to run devices such as VoIP (voice over IP) phones, access points and other appliances without the need for a wall wart to provide power.
17. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Coming into the decade, Linux was already a hot commodity, but it wasn’t until Red Hat launched the buttoned-down and subscription-priced Enterprise variant of its Linux distribution that Linux was truly ready – both in terms of road map stability and of business model – to truly storm the enterprise.
18. Salesforce.com
Rising from the ashes of the failed ASP (application service provider) market of the late 1990s, Salesforce.com proved that companies would run vital enterprise business applications – even CRM and sales force automation – over the web.
19. Social networks
They may seem like a big waste of time, but social networks have had a significant effect on the way people and businesses connect and communicate.
20. Solaris 10
During the latter half of ’00s, Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 10 sat at the leading edge of operating system technologies, with unique capabilities that include Containers virtualisation, Dtrace system instrumentation and the ZFS file system. Solaris 10 also helped put a stamp of inevitability on the x86-64 architecture and on the open-source-as-a-platform licensing strategy.
21. Treo
Looking at it today, the Treo may seem like just another smartphone. But the early Treo set the stage for and was very influential in the development of modern smartphones. Any phone today that isn’t an iPhone or a new phone directly influenced by the iPhone owes a huge debt to the Treo (and even the iPhone is influenced by the Treo).
22. Twitter
Twitter is a waste of time. We’ll just post that on our Facebook and corporate collaboration system status updates. Hmm. Maybe Twitter has been massively influential and changed the way we all communicate.
23. VMware
Virtualisation has been around for more than 10 years, but it was in the last decade that it really took off. And, to a large degree, the impetus for this drive to virtualise was VMware technology. Offering everything from simple-to-use products that let consumers run virtual machines to the most robust enterprise-class virtualisation platforms, VMware has made it possible to run whole farms of servers with very little hardware involved.
24. VOIP, Skype, SIP
Like virtualisation, VoIP technology has been around for more than 10 years. However, it’s only in the last 10 years that the technology has reached a real state of usability. Skype helped show consumers how cheap and easy voice calls can be from a PC, while SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) signaling eased standards-based interoperability among vendors, opening the door for the integration of many different kinds of products into the communications mix.
25. Windows XP
With all of the recent hype about Windows 7 – and the bad experiences that nearly every user has had at one time or another with Windows XP – it might seem strange to see Windows Vista’s predecessor on any top tech list. But XP is certainly the most dominant operating system of the decade. And when Vista proved to be a disappointment, a majority of users and businesses were happy to stick with XP (and many still are).
